Games: What do they actually cost you?

[lacktheknack]

My soul.

Man, I hate being broke.

PC games cost $50-$60 new plus 5% national tax (soon to have a provincial tax attached, no doubt) in Alberta, Canada. Of course, only suckers who have money buy them at that price. I can usually pick things up for $15 about six months later during gog.com or Steam events.

One hour of work for 5-500 hours of entertainment. Not a bad investment.

 

[Zetacross]

Malaysian here. ~RM160($50) for common games up to ~RM240($75) for rare titles (Japanese games mostly).

Still, I'm resorting to buy PC games online (cheap ones) or split the price with a friend of mine, by buying from him second hand or something.

 

[Total LOLige]

In the UK usually £40 for console and £30 for PC although PC prices have been creeping up to £35 & £40. FIFA games are like £45 on console now at launch, the licensing gets better the gameplay gets shitter. I've been buying more and more PC games lately because it's cheap to buy downloads. I <3 Green Man Gaming, you lot go on about Steam too much. GMG is the real cheapos choice. What's that there's a 75% off sale, here have another 20% off coupon.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I live in Argentina.
I think, on average, they cost anywhere between 40 to 80 dollars. It varies.
Older generation games cost less than 10 dollars.
All of these values are more or less meaningless though, since they're too pricey for most people, who instead rely on pirate games which sell at 15 pesos. That's about a dollar and sixty cents. Since pirates were never able to figure out how to hack anything past the Xbox 360, that means there isn't much of a market going on for Nintendo and the PS3, and if you don't own an Xbox 360 you're probably stuck in the 6th generation, playing pirated games of the Xbox and the PS2.

 

[tilmoph]

In the US, a new release game is $59.99 base + state and local taxes. Where I live, that's 6 cents per dollar state, and no local, so $63.59 final total. Quick google shows the tax in NYC would be $2.40 state sales tax (4%) plus $5.30 local for $7.70 in taxes and a final total of $67.69.

 

[Haakmed]

Games for me brand new day one (Not with my Employee discount) costs 65 bucks. Factoring my Employee discount I generally pay around 55 bucks day one. However I don't often buy games day one and wait till they are on sale or used or general price drop over time. Get most of my games for less than 20. Helps keep me under a budget of 200 bucks a year on games.

 

[Evonisia]

Excluding Steam (obviously), most "new" games range between £35-£50, depending on how popular it is. Gears of War: Judgment was roughly £35-£40 on it's release week while I saw Bioshock: Infinite at £45 on it's release week.

I mostly get games as gifts or I buy pre-owned, but that's what happens with new games.

 

[Joccaren]

Wow that is way too expensive. It must be expensive to ship stuff to Australia?

In Canada it is 60 plus tax, so it goes to 65ish.

Not at all. They just know they can rip us off.
I've shipped in new games for just over $40 from Britain, free shipping, and pre-orders for under $50. Shop online my Australian friends, it is the only way to not get ripped off.

[Note: Those are the prices for the PC version, which is generally cheaper].

 

[Roxor]

Australia, although I buy almost entirely on Steam.

If it's from a big-name publisher, it usually shows up as $80 on Steam, although there is the odd game which pushes $90 or $100. The less-greedy publishers tend to launch on Steam at around $50.

Given I'm a cheap bastard, I don't buy it until I see a price under $25, although it does usually require waiting a year or so for that to happen.

 

[rob_simple]

Depending on where you shop in the UK, new games retail from between £30 to £45. I think the only two full-price games I bought last year were Borderlands 2 and the Ratchet & Clank collection though; usually I don't pay more than £20 for a new game, and that's if I really have faith in it.

 

[The_Great_Galendo]

$60 in America, taxes brings it up to around $62 or more. With minimum wage around $7.25, not counting income tax, that's a little less than nine hours of work.

Gotta take the working time into consideration, folks.

Otherwise it's all tax-free Steam stuff, usually costs less than $20, with most of the expansion packs included, and free Genuine-quality TF2 crossovers that are worth a good amount in the marketplace.

I agree that we should be reporting these figures in hours of work and not whatever currency they use in anyone's particular country, since we all have 24 hours in a day. It's a bit more work to do the calculations, but it's a lot more meaningful than just saying X dollars/pounds/euros/whatever. I'll continue your example to account for income taxes:

A person making the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour working 2000 hours a year earns $14,500 in before-tax income. Assuming a single taxpayer with no dependents, this person will pay about $500 or so in federal income tax (I'm not accounting for additional state taxes since they vary widely), and social security and medicare "taxes" account for another 8% or so, so he'll take home about $12,900 per year. Divide that by the 2000 hours he worked and he's earning a take-home pay of about 6.45 an hour.

This is convenient, since that means a game priced at $64.50 (again, state taxes vary widely, but in places where there is sales tax this is about right) requires almost exactly 10 hours of minimum-wage work.

 

[Hazy992]

Full price games are usually £35-£45 here (so it hovers around the $60 mark). That includes VAT as well so that's actually what you pay.

 

[Alfador_VII]

On PC, full price games are £30 - £40 (even sometimes £45 or more). The price has been pushing up lately

However I won't pay £40 for a game unless I REALLY must have it at launch and I can't find a deal, even £35 I will consider carefully.

Console games have been fairly static at £40 for a while, but we'll see what the next generation brings.

 

[Emmenia]

On PC, full price games are £30 - £40 (even sometimes £45 or more). The price has been pushing up lately

However I won't pay £40 for a game unless I REALLY must have it at launch and I can't find a deal, even £35 I will consider carefully.

Console games have been fairly static at £40 for a while, but we'll see what the next generation brings.

Also UK here so pretty much this. I would say I NEVER pay more than £40 for a game but I just bought The Last of Us for £42 which is an extremely rare exception. I normally buy anything I want when it's come down to £25 - £30 or get it as a present.

I always have to laugh when people get excited about the price of games going up. I paid £40 for Doom 2 in 1997....

 

[Alfador_VII]

I always have to laugh when people get excited about the price of games going up. I paid £40 for Doom 2 in 1997....

I keep forgetting how much videogames have come down in real terms over the years

I can remember tapes for the ZX Spectrum (48k woot!) being about 20 quid.

 

[M920CAIN]

The $60 US doesn't include sales tax, which is $.06 so we do pay more than the marked price. I'd like to point out the US economy is shit so depending on where you live. Using wikipedia's min wage for Australian it's $15.16 US dollars, the US's varies from state to state but the federal is $7.25. I'm not sure about Australia but the government also takes taxes out of that so in America you get paid even less. That's not even getting into the cost of living, since that varies greatly.

You can't do a side by side comparison of prices and expect it to be accurate.

Uhm, in Romania minimum wage is 200$/month, medium wage is about 400$/month, so there's always worst places to be mate! America's still got it good.

The most I can afford game is a 75% steam sale, other than that, not so much.
New box games also cost about 75$ here, just checked.

 

[neppakyo]

In canada, yes $59.99 plus tax. Its a tax called HST. Which combines the federal GST tax (Goods and Services) and PST (provincial sales tax) into one single tax, which can range from 13% in ontario to 15% in Nova Scotia. So, 59.99 x 1.13 = $67.80 (In canada, no pennies now, so we round it up or down).



Source: http://www.proccounting.com/resources/tax-information/119-what-are-the-gsthst-rates.html

 

[WWmelb]

The $60 US doesn't include sales tax, which is $.06 so we do pay more than the marked price. I'd like to point out the US economy is shit so depending on where you live. Using wikipedia's min wage for Australian it's $15.16 US dollars, the US's varies from state to state but the federal is $7.25. I'm not sure about Australia but the government also takes taxes out of that so in America you get paid even less. That's not even getting into the cost of living, since that varies greatly.

You can't do a side by side comparison of prices and expect it to be accurate.

Uhm, in Romania minimum wage is 200$/month, medium wage is about 400$/month, so there's always worst places to be mate! America's still got it good.

The most I can afford game is a 75% steam sale, other than that, not so much.
New box games also cost about 75$ here, just checked.

k then, i'm not going to complain about aussie prices anymore then. i feel for you and heres hoping for a growing economy for our eastern european friends.

 

[OneCatch]

South Wales, UK.
Prices seem to vary between £30 ($46, AU$50, EUR35) for smaller releases, to £45-50 ($72, AU$80, EUR50) for AAA's like whatever the new COD is.
I personally never pay more than £30 for a game. The one exception would have been Rome II, but that's down to £29.99 anyway.

I used to kind of operate on this system:

Spoiler: xkcd goodness

Though that's happening less and less now that I have a computer that can play modern stuff, and Steam sales tempt me!

 

[TehCookie]

The $60 US doesn't include sales tax, which is $.06 so we do pay more than the marked price. I'd like to point out the US economy is shit so depending on where you live. Using wikipedia's min wage for Australian it's $15.16 US dollars, the US's varies from state to state but the federal is $7.25. I'm not sure about Australia but the government also takes taxes out of that so in America you get paid even less. That's not even getting into the cost of living, since that varies greatly.

You can't do a side by side comparison of prices and expect it to be accurate.

Uhm, in Romania minimum wage is 200$/month, medium wage is about 400$/month, so there's always worst places to be mate! America's still got it good.

The most I can afford game is a 75% steam sale, other than that, not so much.
New box games also cost about 75$ here, just checked.

I never said America was bad, I was pointing out Australians make more so their games cost more and they aren't get as badly ripped off as some like to complain. I know there are plenty of worse places.